Intellectual Curiosities and Provocations

April 2007

Reviewing the Review: April 1 2007

Poetry,
Politics
I can't complain (and you know I like to complain) about a New York Times Book Review whose cover article informs me about a literary patron and publisher I'd never heard of, jazz-age ocean-liner heiress Nancy Cunard, who apparently published Samuel Beckett, anthologized W. E. B. DuBois, made love with T. S. Eliot and took her political idealism to such an insane extreme that she ultimately lost all her wealth and most of her friends.

This article is part of the Reviewing the New York Times Book Review series. The next post in the series is Reviewing the Review: April 8 2007. The previous post in the series is Reviewing the Review: March 25 2007.

Cormac McCarthy: Owning My Hate

 
Cormac McCarthy demonstrates his favorite squint
 

Levi Asher examines his deep hatred for the grim and mannered prose of Cormac McCarthy, and ponders the value of literary criticism in a world that proclaims McCarthy a genius.

American,
Fiction,
Lit-Crit,
News,
Reading

A year ago I listed Cormac McCarthy as one of the five overrated writers of 2006. This was just a couple of months before McCarthy's The Road was published, and I had no idea what agonies lay in store.

I am simply baffled, just straight out bewildered, by the fact that so many people whose opinions I respect -- Oprah Winfrey, the numerous Morning News Tournament of Books judges, even my friend Jeff Bryant (who I usually agree with, and who shares my love for Kerouac and Bukowski) -- are calling Cormac McCarthy a great writer and The Road a masterpiece. I certainly can't believe that all these smart people are wrong and I am right -- yet at the same time I have made every honest effort to understand what I am missing. I even bought The Road, intending to give it a fair read, a fresh start, hoping that maybe, just maybe, this will be the Cormac McCarthy novel I can finally stand.

Five Poems I Love

Lists,
Poetry
So, it's National Poetry Month, and as such, I thought I'd pick out a few of my favorite poems to write about this week. It was ridiculously hard to limit myself to five, but it was necessary, too. If I hadn't, I'd probably go on all night. I've written before about how my top two all-time favorite poems are "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "Howl" respectively, but I've chosen to leave those off the list in favor of others that I haven't given as much airtime. So, in no particular order, here they are:

1. A Supermarket in California - Allen Ginsberg

Reviewing the Review: April 8 2007

Poetry
I'm starting to like William Logan, a poetry critic who's been staking out controversial positions in the New York Times Book Review. He pissed me off a few weeks ago when he mugged an unsuspecting Hart Crane, but the outline of Logan's mission is coming into clearer view with this week's cover article on Derek Walcott's Selected Poems. Eschewing the reverence too many critics would show for an aging Nobel laureate from St.

This article is part of the Reviewing the New York Times Book Review series. The next post in the series is Reviewing the Review: April 15 2007. The previous post in the series is Reviewing the Review: April 1 2007.

Jonathan Swift and Lady Montagu: an 18th Century Literary Smackdown

 
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who challenged Jonathan Swift
 

Published in 1732, Jonathan Swift's poem, "The Lady's Dressing Room" follows a man, Strephon, as he goes through the unoccupied room of a woman named Celia (which means that he's an 18th century medicine-cabinet-snoop) and discovers that, though lovely in public, in private she's pretty much a disgusting pig ,,,

British,
Classics,
Fiction


Published in 1732, Jonathan Swift's poem, "The Lady's Dressing Room" (full text) follows a man, Strephon, as he goes through the unoccupied room of a woman named Celia (which means that he's an 18th century medicine-cabinet-snoop) and discovers that, though lovely in public, in private she's pretty much a disgusting pig:

And first a dirty smock appeared,
Beneath the arm-pits well besmeared.
Strephon, the rogue, displayed it wide
And turned it round on every side.
On such a point few words are best,
And Strephon bids us guess the rest;
And swears how damnably the men lie
In calling Celia sweet and cleanly.
Now listen while he next produces
The various combs for various uses,
Filled up with dirt so closely fixt,
No brush could force a way betwixt.
A paste of composition rare,
Sweat, dandruff, powder, lead and hair;
A forehead cloth with oil upon't
To smooth the wrinkles on her front.

Reviewing the Review: April 15 2007

Politics
This week's New York Times Book Review is devoted entirely to international literature, a welcome choice. I don't generally love "theme issues", but the NYTBR can do an issue like this anytime they want.

This article is part of the Reviewing the New York Times Book Review series. The next post in the series is Reviewing the Review: April 22 2007. The previous post in the series is Reviewing the Review: April 8 2007.

Instant Poetry With Paul Muldoon And Brad Leithauser

Events,
Internet Culture,
New York City,
News,
Poetry,
Poetry Readings,
Spoken Word



I attended an interesting display of speed poetry last night at the Strand Bookstore in Greenwich Village, New York featuring two acclaimed practitioners of the verse form, Paul Muldoon and Brad Leithauser. An eager audience of literati, blogerati and peoplorati had gathered to watch, quietly munching on grapes and cheese or sipping wine, as the two poets nervously typed into laptops connected to QuickMuse.com. The odd experiment made for a good evening of spoken word, and the finished poems aren't bad at all.

Reflecting on Virginia Tech

Being A Writer,
News
I have started writing this post five times now, and each time, I have erased it, and stared at my screen, I guess hoping that the more I erased and the longer I stared, the closer I'd come to knowing what to write. It turns out that I still don't know, but since I can't sit here forever, I will go ahead and do my best. As you know by now, a student at Virginia Tech opened fire in a residence hall and in a classroom, killing 32 people, wounding 15 others, and finally killing himself.

The Most Useless Three Sentences In The World (And A Couple Other Things I’m Angry About)

Personal,
Politics
In anticipation of the shock wave of PEN World Voices coverage that's heading your way fast, today's LitKicks post will not be about literature. Today I'd just like to talk about three random things that it occurs to me to be angry about today.

1. Here are the most useless three sentences in the world:

"At the tone, please leave your message. When you finish you may hang up, or press one for more options. To leave a callback number, press five."

PEN World Voices: Wednesday Night at Town Hall

Fiction,
New York City,
News,
Poetry,
Poetry Readings
PEN World Voices is a series of more than sixty encounters with writers from around the world, most of them taking place in small rooms before small audiences. But Wednesday night at Town Hall in Manhattan's theater district is "the big show", star-studded and sold-out, and host Salman Rushdie seems almost apologetic about this in his introductory remarks from the Town Hall stage.

This article is part of the PEN World Voices series. The next post in the series is PEN World Voices: Words Without Borders at Columbia University. The previous post in the series is PEN World Voices: Bulgarian Coda.

PEN World Voices: Words Without Borders at Columbia University

Fiction,
New York City,
News
Thursday at PEN World Voices brings me uptown to Columbia University, which I don't visit often enough, to catch a variety of international writers associated with Words Without Borders or the new Words Without Borders anthology.

This article is part of the PEN World Voices series. The next post in the series is PEN World Voices: The Africa Track. The previous post in the series is PEN World Voices: Wednesday Night at Town Hall.

PEN World Voices: The Africa Track

Africa,
Fiction,
New York City,
News,
Politics
Devoting my PEN World Voices Friday to modern African literature, I grab a seat at the Instituto Cervantes near the United Nations where Dedi Felman is moderating a panel of four diverse writers representing Algeria, Nigeria, Cote D'Ivorie and Zanzibar. There's a good crowd of fifty or so eager listeners, and many of us feel confused when the panelists enter and a male writer occupies the seat behind the name plate for Yasmina Khadra.

This article is part of the PEN World Voices series. The next post in the series is PEN World Voices: Saturday Night Spoken Word. The previous post in the series is PEN World Voices: Words Without Borders at Columbia University.

PEN World Voices: Saturday Night Spoken Word

Events,
Music,
New York City,
Poetry,
Spoken Word
Saturday night at the Bowery Ballroom brings another sell-out PEN World Voices crowd, this time in a party mood. Nadine is in the house. Salman is in the house. Anne Waldman is in the house too, and slam poet Gary Mex Glazner is whooping it up somewhere in the back. We're psyched for a rare appearance by playwright Sam Shepard, and we're wondering if Sam and Salman and Nadine are Saul Williams and who-knows-else are going to join headliner Patti Smith for a big "People Have The Power" singalong, which actually doesn't sound like a bad idea.

This article is part of the PEN World Voices series. The next post in the series is PEN World Voices: J.M.G. Le Clezio in Conversation with Adam Gopnik . The previous post in the series is PEN World Voices: The Africa Track.

Shirking the Review: April 29 2007

After a week of PEN World Voices madness, I can't do justice to this week's New York Times Book Review. The cover article is on Edith Wharton, and there's also a big piece on Michael Chabon in Arts and Leisure and a Lisa Carver endpaper in the Magazine.

This article is part of the Reviewing the New York Times Book Review series. The next post in the series is Reviewing the Review: May 6 2007. The previous post in the series is Reviewing the Review: April 22 2007.